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From Pressure to Progress- Assessing the Impact of Taiwan's 108 Curriculum on Teen Mental Health
uncovering references to teenage depression, the research team deemed it necessary to delve deeper
into the severity of this issue. They sought to elucidate public perceptions, primarily from students,
regarding the effectiveness of the new 108 curriculum in addressing academic depression among
Taiwanese students through surveys. The team gathered survey data over an age range of 15-18,
targeting students from senior high schools of both local school students mainly in Taoyuan to the
Chinese version survey and international or American school students in Taipei for the English
version survey, as senior students experience the most changes. In total, the team gathered 191
responses.

The team chose to conduct qualitative research which is composed of solely multiple
choices of scales (degrees) to understand schoolers’ depression in a macro aspect. To focus on this
research, the survey starts off from the apprehension of general ideas of students’ status quo and the
severity of academic predicaments in order to set the result apart from the pressure caused by other
reasons. After checking the severity of students’ conditions, the team compares schoolers of various
educational backgrounds and curriculum experiences with those that have only received Taiwan
education throughout their schooling ages at schools. By gathering different responses from diverse
students (there are two separate surveys, Chinese and English version), as the team have always
expected, the team can further determine whether the new 108 curriculum is a possible and
effective solution to students’ academic depression, or it is unfortunately the culprit that aggravates
this issue. Significantly, the team adapts interlocking questions in this qualitative survey. Namely,
the last part of the survey, which is also the focus of this qualitative survey, is able to collect much
more accurate data with this tactic of separating different responses into groups to different
questions. Aiming to evaluate the effectiveness and a few detailed implications, such as the
decrease of cram schools participation, the shift of universities’ admission from examinations to a
more holistic review, the influence of e-learning portfolios, the team evaluates the responses from
all participants. However, to also include another sector of demography who didn't experience the
education reform, the team added free response boxes at the end of the survey of each section. The
team believes that this method can not only increase the accuracy of the result but also, more
importantly, provides opportunities for the team to contact the respondents for future research.

IV. Analysis and Results

Of all the 182 Chinese survey responses, 61.5% of respondents graded academic pressure
“huge” and 12.1% rated “extreme”, resulting in solely 1.1% of respondents indifferent of academic
pressure (Figure 1).Furthermore, over half (50.5%) of those with affirmed answers admitted that
this predicament has already exacerbated into depression. (Figure 2)That is, according to some
comments left below in the survey free response boxes, a majority of them mentioned that they got
lost in negative moods, such as the vicious cycle of self-blame, diffidence, and nihilism toward life,
causing them to detest Taiwan’s education system of examinations (Figure 1).

Figure 1. How would you rate your academic pressure? (Chinese version)

Figure made by creator

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